Dear all,
Dominic Powlesland has been digitally recording archaeological data for 20 years or more. He advocates that images are stored independently of documents, raw data are best stored in 8-bit ASCII format, and as pdf is essentially a set of printer intructions that can be disassembled easily, it is an appropriate long-term storage medium for documents. He obtains greater clarity with pdf by specifying a printer resolution of 2500 dpi.
But this would not form a "standard". The standard would be for the practitioner to record meta-data on an OASIS recording form (as a minimum), ensure that primary records are 'digitisable' (ie stored on dimensionally stable media) if not directly digitised, and to access speciailist advice on digital archiving if data are directly digitised.
Turning to low grade information such as derived from some watching briefs. Yes, one might have a few print photographs and a plan or two, and a letter or two. But why digitise this ?? The hard copy documents are more dimensionally stable and longer lasting than any electronic format currently known. The cost of digitising may be low, but what is the point of specifying high resolution digitisation for a set of information which contains limited information or utility. In 100 years time, all that any archaeologist will need is a simple presence / absence tick box in most cases. We should not be digitally capturing and electronically storing information merely for the sake of doing it or because it can be done.
Just as Working Paper No 2 of the AEA states that contexts for sampling should be "archaeologically relevant, placed within a useful chronologicval framework, and believed not to be contaminated or of mixed origin", so too should contexts be selected for digitisation and electronic storage. Selection is the key, and meta-data should explicitly state what that selection is !
Cheers, Neil
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